


One by One

by KupalaNight



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: After the Trials of Marmora, Blood and Injury, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Here's to the Shiro we know, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Keith coming to terms with being Galra, M/M, Supportive Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 11:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17021448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KupalaNight/pseuds/KupalaNight
Summary: One by one.Stitch by stitch.Shiro sews the flesh of his shoulder together.  Like a tattered shirt.  Like a doll with a torn-off limb.  Like something that would have been thrown away by anyone else alive if Shiro wasn’t there and stubbornly blind to the sense of letting him go.





	One by One

**Author's Note:**

> We'll be fine.

One by one.

Off comes each boot.

Knee-pads.

Suddenly, there’s a _'whoosh'_ behind him.Keith flinches, goes cold, and then feels heat rush up his chest when he sees it’s nothing but the door to his quarters sliding shut.  On his trek to the bathroom, he deactivates his outer armor, wincing as the metal slides down his injured shoulder.He lets it slip and drop to the floor where he walks, and doesn't even spare a pause as he steps out of it.

The bodysuit’s a larger issue.It has no zipper.The memory-material is supposed to stretch from the high neck like rubber and roll down over his sweating skin, but he needs both arms for that.When he tries reaching forward to yank at the collar with his left, the movement still pulls at his right trap and he doubles over, seeing white.

So he uses his knife, and takes his time sawing through it, until he’s left picking bits of fabric out of the gash in his shoulder with sticky red fingers.

He was an idiot to refuse that downer-injection Coran offered.

Finally, he’s free, and the matte black thing is scraps on the floor.  He pads over barefoot through the opening doors to the bathroom.  The chemical spray of the Altean shower will sting like hell, he figures, but -

_Oh - Fuck._

The lights have flickered on automatically, before he can process what is there, staring back at him in mirrored walls.

Hungry eyes in a pale, scratched up face pierce through the glass from under his matted bangs.  The hair plasters to crusted blood round his nose like ink.

Looking down is even worse - all sharp edges and bruises getting darker by the minute.

For a second, he has a vision of the violet spreading, covering his ribs and boney legs.  Growing fur -

_“I want you to lead Voltron”_

What a _joke._

He sighs and slides down, down along cool glass, hissing as his shoulder skids against it.

_Hissing._

_Do they hiss when they’re angry?_

_Like cats?_

_He’s believed the ones with fur look a bit like cats ever since Lance mentioned it at the table.  Shiro stayed quiet and frowned into his plate, that evening._

He takes another look up from his knees to study his reflection.  The longer he glares, the more distorted his face gets.  His eyes seem to flicker, his teeth seem more pointed . . . until seconds _\- minutes? hours?_ \- later, the Keith staring back out at him has yellow eyes that glow in the dark and a snarl baring sharp, leonine canines.

 _“Keith - ”_ it says.

“Keith!”

And suddenly, he’s jolted awake, knocking his head on the wall. His vision’s flooded with light as the sensors turn back on.

Shiro’s frozen in the doorway.  His eyes are wide.  Haunted.

Keith notices himself in the mirrored wall, behind the man, and sees the smudged trail of blood running down above his own head.It’s crusted dry to the glass.

He’ll need a towel to clean that, he muses, head still cloudy.

He grunts as his sight adjusts to the light, and props himself up.When he gets ready to heave his body up, a pair of mismatched arms is already gripping him by the waist.

“I got it,” he mutters, but instead of propping him up for balance, Shiro lifts him under his knobby knees and raises his body to set him down on the countertop.

The man ducks out of the bathroom.  Keith hears shuffling, and a second later, Shiro is back with a blanket, draping it around Keith’s back. The fogginess in Keith’s head clears itself into a different kind of confusion, like wrong wiring on a circuit board.  He shuffles the blanket under his thighs, pulls it over his waist and tries his best to fight back the flush over his skin.

As Keith wraps the fabric tighter over his shoulders, Shiro stops him, quietly determined to look over the damage.  Calloused fingers ghost along the carved-up flesh near his tendons.  They’re shaking.

So he repeats “I got it!”, and when his voice comes out more hoarse than forceful, he shifts his knees under the weight of Shiro’s arm.  It does nothing.  Seconds later, Keith finds himself in the grip of a metal arm as the setting of the sink is changed to running water and a medical kit is set on the other side of the counter.

Paying him no mind, Shiro holds Keith still as his fingers feel out the temperature of the water.

It takes another few moments for Keith’s head to fully process that, yes - this is, in fact, happening, and yes, he is sitting bare-assed in front of Shiro being coddled like a baby.  By then, to his own chagrin, he ends up with a warm, damp washcloth in his face, wiping the sweat away from his brow and over his reddening cheekbones.

“ - Shiro!”

He tries to struggle, almost incensed, but he may as well be a cub in the clutches of a lioness.  The cloth wipes over his mouth, behind his ears, down his neck, under his arm - 

His shoulder is throbbing. His insides are writhing in his gut.

He lashes out, and the words flare out like fire scorching his tongue. _“Will you - ”_

But then, he sees his eyes.They’re peering down at him, sincere and grey and pleading.The pull in his chest stutters, drops.

Keith hangs his head.Seconds pass, and he expects Shiro to drop the cloth, to walk out without a word, to leave him and never say a thing about any of this.

_“Then, you’ve chosen to be alone.”_

But instead, warm, gentle hands slip the blanket down over his shoulder, baring the skin as Keith’s long fingers curl over the countertop. “I’m going to have to go old-school on this.You want a downer-injection before I start?”

Keith shakes his head, not trusting himself to speak again, and Shiro gives him a slight smile before reaching back into the medical kit to withdraw something pointed resembling a needle and a sealed pack of synthetic thread.  He places it next to the disinfectant.

Keith’s knuckles whiten from gripping the steel as Shiro wipes away blood and grime and shame with stinging antiseptic.

Next comes the suture thread, and Shiro laces it through the needle, holding Keith’s shoulder steady in his grip.

And then -

One by one.

Stitch by stitch.

Shiro sews the flesh of his shoulder together.Like a tattered shirt.Like a doll with a torn-off limb.Like something that would have been thrown away by anyone else alive if Shiro wasn’t there and stubbornly blind to the sense of letting him go.

Once the rest of his scrapes are cleansed and sealed, Keith is bundled up again in the older man’s arms and brought out the door with his face curled into the other’s chest. Carefully, he’s placed on the far side of the bed, close to the wall.

He tries sitting up.His fingers scramble over the edge of the bed, but without a word, Shiro bends down and hands him the boxers he discarded in the other day’s rush to change and leave.

What _the other day_ means, exactly, he has no idea.  He does not have a clue how long he was tossed around in the trials, how long they’ve been in that bathroom . . .

The mattress sinks, and then there’s the weight and warmth of Shiro slipping under the blankets.  He props himself up beside Keith’s own thinner frame, closing him in between his body mass and the wall.

Shiro reaches under the bed and pulls out a data-pad - _Keith’s_ data-pad - switching off the hologram setting and dimming down the brightness.

He rests there, scanning some educational translation on Galactic Common.As if Keith wasn’t staring accusingly up at him the entire time, demanding _he-doesn’t-know what._

One by one.

The minutes drag on.

Until Keith, with eyes trained on the ceiling, finally mutters a quiet “hey . . . ”

Shiro hums.

“ - is this your way of trying to make me believe you don’t hate me, or something?”

It is as if he’s sixteen again and waiting outside Iverson’s office after his latest fuck-up, hoping Shiro doesn’t show so that he wouldn’t have to look the boy in the eye.

But Shiro showed.

Every time.

Keith gets his answer when he feels Shiro still mid-article to cock an unimpressed eyebrow at the screen.Slowly, out of the corner of his eye, Keith sees the man turn his head to face him.

So Keith meets him look-for-look through the dark, eyes narrowed in challenge.

Shiro blinks dispassionately. “I’m not dignifying that with an answer.”

 _This._ This is the Shiro few people ever meet.

The side of him that gets offended.The sensitivity.One can challenge him, prod at him, provoke him, and he’d take it.Hell, he would thrive in it, and meet the dare head-on just to prove himself.But question his heart, and he grows cool.Hard.Closes himself off.

“Shiro . . . ” Keith exhales, “I know what you wanted, but things have changed.”

“Nothing has ch - ”

Keith sits up, ignoring the ache in his limbs and in his heart.

"I’m not our only option, and you know it.It’s too late, now, but if - ” he stops, and catches himself, “ - _after_ we kill Zarkon . . . we should look for someone else to pilot Red.”

 _“Keith - “_ Shiro reaches out to him, but Keith raises his hand, lays it on him.

“ - Stop.” he cuts in, chest tight as if his own words are clawing him open from the inside.“As if it wouldn’t be - Ulaz and the Blades doesn’t change everything they put you through.Shiro, why would you even want me around?Look at Allura - she’s not hiding it!”

Hands.Shiro’s hands are clutching his face, cupping either side so that Keith has no choice but to take in the calm of his eyes.

“ _Allura,_ ” says Shiro, “forgot that I’m part-Galra, too.”

Keith's face crumples.Before he can embarrass himself further, he’s dragged back down, pulled into Shiro’s chest.One strong arm is around his waist steadying his breathing, and the other with fingers combing though his wet hair.

Burying his nose under the older man’s square jaw and into his scent, he wonders distantly just when Shiro had let go of the data-pad.

 _“It doesn’t matter where I come from,”_ he said before, back at the base with his head held high and his voice unwavering. _“I know who I am.”_

_“I know who I am.”_

Doubts are banished with the sound of Shiro’s murmur.  “You know that wasn’t me, right?” he whispers, voice low and soothing. “I would _never_ \- ”

“Kolivan told me. Called it a virtual mind-scape.”Under him, Shiro’s shoulders slump.

“It was my mom,” he concludes, "I saw my dad, back there.We were in the shack, and he said - he said the knife was hers, and that she was on her way.”

His voice is pulled tight, wringed-out and strained again in that way he hates. “I had to go.”

Shiro’s hand rests on his head, “Something tells me she didn't want to leave, either.”

“You don’t know that.”

“But I know you.  And you didn’t want to make that choice.  Maybe she was in the same position."

“It doesn’t matter,” he repeats, fingers curling into Shiro’s shirt, over muscle.Over scars. “I know who I am.”

Maybe one day he’ll believe it.

“It’s still okay for it to matter, Keith,” he hears the man’s whisper. “It’s okay."

Keith drifts off to sleep that night with a mouth pressing fiercely into his hair, as he counts the thumps of a familiar heartbeat.

One by one.


End file.
